The Rodeo

I attended my first rodeo last weekend. It was buck wild, literally. First, we decided to take a cab to the event. The only problem was that it was about 45 minutes away and there was not one sign to lead us to there. Our cab driver was a saint, he must have asked at least 20 people in the street how to get there. At one point he pulled over on the highway to ask a couple that was crossing the 5 lane highway. It was wild, they were so helpful with directions while giantic 16 wheelers were whipping behind them. You definitely would not see this in the U.S. Finally, we figured out how to get to the neighborhood that the rodeo was in, but now we had to find the actual stadium. You would think that with such a big event SOMEONE would know about it but that was not the case. My friend Marcos, kept asking the cab driver to stop at a gas station to ask for directions, but I don't think they do that here in Mexico. Here in Mexico they pull up real close to the front door of a store and yell in at the clerk. Yeah, it happened and the clerk was more than happy to help us out. Getting lost was actually pretty fun, Igot to see parts of Mexico that I may have never seen otherwise.When we finally arrived it was awesome! There were cowboys everywhere with leather chaps, spurs, lassos the whole deal. And most of them happened to be incredibly good looking. In the beginning it was great we ate delicious food, it wasn't too crowded and we got really good seats. Then the rodeo began and in the first event the cowboys rode their horses next to the bull, grabbed its tail and threw it on the ground. This was only if they 'won' if then missed the bull it was considered a 'loss', but not for me, I was rooting for the bulls. I hated to see them get knocked over. It didn't seem to hurt them, they just seemed super annoyed, like they were saying, "Leave me the hell alone stupid cowboys." The next event was bull riding, now this was awesome! You can see the picture above. Now this is how I pictured a rodeo. The bull is simply being ridden and eventually throws the cowboy off. It was really cool to see. Another event was roping wild horses. The first horse that came out was ridden by a cowboy and when he could not ride anymore he hopped off and the other cowboys tried to lasso the horse. When the horse was lassosed it hit the ground, but even I could tell that something had gone horribly wrong. The horse did not get up...they had to tie a rope to him and drag him out of the ring. I could not stop thinking about the horse so I went to check on him...he was dead. I was so sad, I was like how could this happen? Does it happen all the time? I thought this is cruel, they should cancel rodeos all together. But Nicole went to check on the horse as well, and the people told her that horses rarely die at rodeos and that this was an extreme case. They told that it was a one and a million chance to see a horse die at a rodeo. This made me feel a bit better. The night continued and it just got better and better. The cowboys were doing tricks with their lassos like spinning it around their bodies and jumping through it was very impressive. Nicole and I were very popular because we were the only Americans there. The announcers asked if we would take our pictures with them. They asked us why there were not other gringos there and we said, "Because nobody can find this place!" I'm sure if I will return to a rodeo but I am happy that I was able to check it out. Don't tell PETA they would be all over this shit.